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The festive season brings with it many amazing and wonderful things. Increased goodwill, camaraderie and cheer.
It is good to be alive.
Around here, we keep that festiveness going. After all, we have to be ready for La Befana. She arrives here on January 6th after a strenuous overnight flight from Italy. I imagine riding a broom for hours without a padded broom handle might get a bit painful, especially if you are a few centuries old.
This good Italian witch is part of a puzzling seasonal phenomenon. There is a skyrocketing increase in break-ins in most of our homes, but most of the time we don’t call the police or beef up our security systems. We don’t fear losing our possessions, be they mundane or treasured, from these annual break-and-enter artists. Instead, for many of us who are fortunate, things are coming in by droves. Remember Christmas morning?
Beings like The Elves on the Shelf are among the first to enter many homes. These sprites cause all kinds of naughtiness—spilling things, hiding themselves in odd places, breaking into the treats and leaving crumbs, or worse, all over the kitchen counter. Then, whether you have a chimney or not, Santa will have arrived really early to our homes where children have been too excited to sleep and parents are too tired to get up. Other assorted elves such as Bluetoes may visit too. This year, just before Christmas Eve, he brought us a small paper house filled with gingerbread.
Where do all these welcome visitors come from?
“The North Pole!”, children will shout.
We, who call ourselves grownups, also know they come with all the love and goodwill that all of us can muster, even under trying times. It’s a world-wide happening—every year, every year.
Now we are waiting for La Befana to swoop by on the eve of January 6 to fill the socks we leave out. She does get to visit most of the kids in Italy, as I understand it.
This day, which falls on Epiphany, is a public holiday in Italy and has been celebrated since the 1300s with special festivals, decorations and lots of little toy Befanas. Kids put out their socks hoping to avoid getting that dreaded lump of coal—La Befana will know if they have been on their best behaviour.
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A few years after La Befana had been visiting our house, we found out more about her life from a charming book called “The Christmas Witch, An Italian Legend”. Did you know she has a terrible singing voice? Causing shutters to slam around the neighbourhood? And she bakes delicious cookies. We re-read the book every year. Legend has it that the three Wise Men stopped by her place looking for directions to the manger where baby Jesus lay. They asked her to come along. She hesitated. She had to sweep and clean her house first, she explained. By the time she had a change of heart, it was too late. She never found the Wise Men or the stable. But ever after she has flown around on Jan. 6 giving small gifts to as many children as she can.
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Surprisingly, La Befana has made it over here to furthest Stouffville for our children and now our grandchildren. We put out an assortment of regular socks—the bigger, the better. La Befana fills them with a couple of chocolates, some salami, walnuts, mandarin oranges and maybe a tiny cheese or two. Many years ago, as some of my Italian relatives remember it, she would tuck the only orange of the year into those socks. That precious, glowing orange. But during war years or other lean times, even her magic couldn’t make that orange appear. But she always managed at least some roasted chestnuts, dried figs or an apple.
For the brand-new year of 2024, I wish everyone this same spirit of goodwill to overcome conflicts everywhere. I wish you all a happy, healthy, creative and peaceful New Year.
PHOTO CREDITS:
Photo of LaBefana dolls in Rome, ricksteves.com by ETBD staff
La Befana book: The Christmas Witch, An Italian Legend Retold by Joanne Oppenheim, Illustrated by
Annie Mitra, published by Bantam Books, 1993.
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